Following months of negotiations, President Trump has signed an executive order for the US to take over ownership of TikTok from the Chinese company ByteDance.
On Thursday, Trump signed the order, which calls for a joint venture based in the US to run TikTok, including the video-sharing app’s algorithms and content moderation.
The joint venture will be “majority-owned and controlled by United States persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary,” the order says. Meanwhile ByteDance and its affiliates will only be able to take a 20% stake.
In addition, the deal requires TikTok’s US user data to be stored domestically to address concerns that the Chinese government could exploit the information for spying, although ByteDance has dismissed such concerns as fear-mongering.
The deal arrives after Congress and the Biden administration passed a US law to ban TikTok in an effort to force ByteDance to divest. However, Trump has sidestepped enforcing the ban by extending the deadline for ByteDance to sell several times.
Thursday’s announcement signals that the TikTok ownership saga might be finally coming to an end. However, the executive order doesn’t specifically say which companies will be running the joint venture or when ownership will exactly change hands. Nor does it address conflicting reports about whether US TikTok users will need to download a new version of the app for access.
Instead, the executive order describes the deal as a “Framework Agreement,” suggesting that the US, ByteDance and China are still hammering out some of the details. Nevertheless, Trump said at the White House that the Chinese government has given the green light. “They’re on board, I spoke with President Xi. We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing and he said, ‘Go ahead with it,’” Trump said.
Although the executive order doesn’t mention which companies will own a stake in the joint venture, Trump mentioned that Oracle’s cofounder Larry Ellison, Dell CEO Michael Dell and media mogul Rupert Murdoch are all involved to some extent.
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“Oracle is playing a big part,” Trump added. Vice President JD Vance also noted the deal values TikTok at $14 billion while ensuring US companies and US investors can control the app’s algorithm. “Young people love this. We want everybody to access this, whether they’re MAGA or not. We just want it to be fair. We want it to be fair to everybody” Vance added.
The President also dismissed concerns the US-owned TikTok could be exploited to spread propaganda favorable to the Trump administration. “If I could make it 100% MAGA, I would, but it’s not going to work out that way unfortunately. No, everyone’s going to be treated fairly, every group, every philosophy,” Trump said.
The White House plans on announcing more details in the coming days. TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Michael Kan
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
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